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smallmediumproblems · 4 years

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The archive could never be empty.

It was an unwritten rule of the Magnus Institute, and it was about the only thing that gave Michael Shelley comfort while working there. There was always the possibility of researchers to help, statements to take, visitors to welcome, and occasional officers of the law to politely but firmly turn away. Michael hadn’t encountered the last category himself yet, nor taken a live statement, but he was well informed of the procedures. This wasn’t his first time being left alone in the archive. The department needed someone to be its face as much as it needed a heart or a head.

For most of Michael’s time there, that someone had been Eric Delano. He hadn’t had the same rigorous curiosity that drew Gertrude and Emma (and, by association, Michael) out of their workplace. Instead, he had been more than happy to spend the day actually getting work done in the office, puttering through the shelves while the others were out. There was something domestic about it that Michael always found pleasant. Like having someone to come home to. He liked to think that he provided that to others now that the role was his.

Which is why, when he found a young man sparking at a cigarette in the main office, his first reaction was to put on a smile.

“Excuse me?” Michael said brightly. The young man - really, he was a boy, if a very tall one - the boy looked up with no particular amount of alarm. “I’m sorry, you can’t really smoke in here.”

The boy looked skeptical, but stowed his lighter. “Uh-huh. D’you work here or something?”

“Yes, my name’s Michael,” Michael informed him. “I’m one of the archival assistants. Can I help you find something?”

“Sure,” said the boy, “I’m looking for Gertrude.”

As Michael approached, he got a better look at his guest, from the shoulder-length black hair to a long black duster jacket that didn’t really match the weather outside. His boots were planted firmly on either side of a shoebox. The cardboard had been reinforced to an almost comical extent, ribbed with strips of duct tape and bearing a haphazard line of staples along the edge of the lid. It looked like it had been sat on at some point.

“She’s not in at the moment,” said Michael. “If you need to drop that off, I can put it on her desk and tell her you came by. What’s your name?”

“Err… Gerry, but I shouldn’t leave this unsupervised,” Gerry said nervously. As he spoke, a soft thump came from inside the box at his feet.

“Is something in there?” asked Michael. His voice jumped up about half a very alarmed octave.

“Well, yeah,” said Gerry, who seemed more perturbed by Michael than whatever was in the box. “What, you thought I just brought her an empty box?”

“No, I- something alive,” Michael protested.

Gerry puffed out his cheeks with an exaggerated sigh. “Wow. That’s actually a really neat philosophical question. I’m gonna say no, for most textbook definitions of ‘alive.’”

“Something moving, then,” said Michael. He took a step forward, and Gerry leaned away as though he wanted to retreat but was rooted to the spot around his charge. “Why don’t we get that somewhere more secure? Whatever it is, I’m sure artefact storage will know how to keep it safe until Gertrude gets here.”

Gerry eyed him suspiciously. This was a new experience for Michael, who had long since resigned himself to looking like the kind of person who confused strangers could approach for directions.

“...fine,” said Gerry, “Just don’t touch it, alright?”

“That is more than alright with me,” said Michael. Even he knew better than to touch foreign objects in the Archive. He stood at a safe distance as Gerry awkwardly managed to pick up the box without relinquishing his stance.

Gerry stared at it for a long moment.

He shook it slightly in place.

He flipped it over to reveal a large hole torn in the bottom.

“Well, shit,” he concluded, "You wouldn't happen to know what time Gertrude's coming back, would you?"

"Not for another hour, I think," said Michael. He peered inside the box to see that the inside had been padded with some sort of steel wool. It was smeared with a dark, glistening substance that might have been blood. Something inside smelled like an electrical fire.

“Great!” Gerry said brightly. “That means we’ve got one hour to find the thing before she comes back and kills me.”

“What exactly did you bring in here?” Michael demanded.

“Funny story, that. It acts like something Dark, but it’s more along the lines of Beholding,” Gerry explained. Seeing Michael’s blank look, he changed tactics. “Ahh. You’re that assistant. Tell you what: It’s a little hard to describe. You should probably just look behind you.”

This backfired somewhat, as Michael let out a yelp and immediately crashed into Gerry when he whirled around. Across the room, something darted into a wastepaper bin and upturned it over itself, hissing angrily.

“What was th-”

“Keep your eyes on it,” Gerry screeched, “I don’t bloody know what it’s called, now get off!” He struggled to navigate Michael’s flailing limbs until they were both standing. Michael stared dutifully at the overturned bin, waiting for some noise, some movement, some indication of threat.

“I didn’t get a good look at it,” he said rather aimlessly, “It moved like a… rat? Or a lizard? But the legs were wrong, how- how does it have legs like that?”

Even that wasn’t accurate to what he’d seen. His mind scrabbled at physical descriptors that didn’t quite fit, and quickly settled into more visceral ones. The thing in the bin looked like the sensation of finding one more step than you expected at the bottom of the stairs. It looked like the silhouette of the laundry bin just after the lights were turned out, transformed into something monstrous and alien.

“Don’t think too hard about it,” Gerry cautioned him. “The only people who know what it looks like are really, really dead. What it is isn’t important, it’s where it is.”

Michael was not comforted by the fact that it had managed to find an even more flimsy containment than a cardboard box with some metal in it

“Okay,” said Michael, “Okay, what does that mean?”

Gerry grimaced at the bin, unwilling to break his gaze for a proper eye-roll.

“It means,” he said slowly, “That it’s where we think it is, until it isn’t. You saw it go under there, right?”

“Right…?”

“And as long as we don’t see it leave, it’s still there, right?”

“...right.”

“But if we look away, then we can’t see whether it’s left, so it could be anywhere.”

“So we’re hunting… Schroedinger’s lizard-rat,” Michael summarized. The bin gave a taunting little rattle to punctuate his statement.

“Sure, brilliant,” said Gerry. “You should write a book.”

“Hang on, does that mean you used me as bait?” Michael asked.

“How d’you mean?” Gerry replied. There was a hint of a smile in his voice that answered the question.

“When you told me to look behind me,” said Michael. “It wasn’t actually there, was it?”

There was a short pause. Michael wished that he could have looked sternly over at Gerry.

“It was there after you looked,” said Gerry. “If it makes you feel any better, you saved us loads of time trying to find it. Plus, like, some moderate to severe skin lacerations.”

“Great,” Michael said glumly.

“Speaking of which, have you got any knives?”

“No?” Michael exclaimed. “I mean, not personally.”

“What-?”

“Probably in the break room, alright?” said Michael. “We’ve got one for cutting birthday cakes, I don’t know if it’s sharp enough to- Are, are you planning to kill that thing?”

“Yeeeeah,” Gerry said, drawing the word out reluctantly. “I was really hoping to show it to Gertrude. It’s right weird and I figured she’d be interested. Probably not so much if it’s loose in her office. You go get that knife, I’ll stay here with the liz-rat.”

“No!” Michael protested. “No, what if it gets out? I don’t want you getting hurt.”

That threw him off guard. “It’s totally safe. As long as I’ve got my eyes on it, I’m good.”

“But-” Michael took a second to try and come up with an argument. “It’s already escaped once. N-no offense, but- But what’s going to happen if it escapes again? What if you need help?”

“Hey,” said Gerry, “Look at me.”

“Um-”

“Nope, right, don’t look. Listen,” he continued. He sounded like he was trying to be reassuring but not very practiced in it. “Listen to me. I’m good. I’ve wrestled worse stuff. Go get me a knife, and I’ll prove it to you.”

Michael kept his eyes on the bin until he had to turn towards the break room.

He wasn’t sure why he’d argued. Gerry seemed to know what he was doing, enough to explain while he was doing it. And shouldn’t Michael be mad that this strange young man used him as bait? The thing was, though, that he was quite young. As Michael rummaged quickly through the silverware drawers, he wished he could convince himself that maybe Gerry just didn’t look his real age. Maybe he was imagining the teenaged squeak in his voice. His stomach had begun to churn at the idea of leaving him alone with a monster, and now that he had done it, he couldn’t help but picture himself returning to the main room to find the creature missing and Gerry bleeding out on the floor.

As Michael’s hand closed on a large kitchen knife, something crashed to the floor from the main room, followed by a string of curses. Michael bolted for the door to find Gerry standing on top of his desk looking frantically around him.

“What happened?”

“Damn thing cheated,” Gerry muttered. He looked up at Michael and gestured accusingly into thin air. “I heard it halfway across the room, and it buggered off when I turned to look.”

“Did it hurt you?” asked Michael. Gerry stopped being frustrated and embarrassed for long enough to look genuinely surprised that Michael cared.

“No,” he said, “I’m fine. Pass me the knife, alright?”

Michael formulated a plan on his way to the desk. Despite what he feared was popular consensus, he was not a stupid man. He just ended up missing a lot of information he needed to make smart decisions. It was his own fault, really, for not asking better questions, or maybe for not paying enough attention. He wasn’t sure. It was part of the reason he’d gone into research in the first place, which he’d been informed was yet another of his not very smart decisions. As he handed the knife over to Gerry, he resolved to make this time turn out differently.

He cocked his head sharply and grabbed the wastepaper bin. Gerry tensed, raising the knife.

“What, what is it?”

“Shh,” Michael said with easily twice as much confidence as he actually had. He approached one of the other desks, turning so that Gerry couldn’t see his face. Then, with a deep, bracing breath, he closed his eyes.

“Seriously, what the fuck are you doing?”

“I heard something,” he lied. He surreptitiously nudged at the desk with his foot until he found the corner. “I think it’s- there!”

He dove to the ground, slamming the bin over something that was probably there. His eyes snapped open in time to catch Gerry vaulting off of his desk towards him, knife poised at the ready. Quickly, Michael began to shake the bin as if something was trapped underneath. He worried that his expression wasn’t quite panicked enough, but honestly he was starting to panic simply because he couldn’t tell what Gerry thought of his acting.

Something that was very suddenly under the bin growled. Michael’s brain went sort of blank for a second; later, he would remember freezing up and screaming something that may have been words. He was briefly aware when the knife plunged directly between his hands, and when something else started screaming along with him, but the next thing he remembered after that was blood spurting from the bin like a clogged fountain pump, and something inside making a noise to match. He nearly screamed again when a hand settled on his shoulder.

“Deep breaths,” Gerry cautioned him. Michael took some deep breaths. “It’s alright, you can look now.”

“Is it-” Michael’s gaze snapped immediately to Gerry’s face. “Did you-”

“Yep,” Gerry confirmed. He wiggled the knife proudly, splattering around some of the blood that coated the lower half. If he noticed, he didn’t seem to care. Maybe it was the adrenaline of the moment, but Michael nearly felt angry at just how calm he looked. “Told you, way easier with two people.”

They decided to slide something under the bin so that Gerry could take it outside without actually touching it. Michael produced a thick manilla folder for the job, then a second one when blood soaked completely through the first. Not for the first time in his career, he worried that whatever the cleaning staff was being paid to venture down into the archive, it wasn’t enough. They paused at the door to the stairs, and Michael considered walking Gerry out to the front entrance.

“How are you planning to, erm… Get rid of it, if you can’t look at it?” he asked.

“Ehh, you know,” Gerry shrugged. “Set it on fire, I guess. I know a girl who could get it into a trash compactor, but then it’s a whole thing, and she’s got enough on her plate as it is.”

“Do be careful,” Michael told him one last time. Gerry smiled, looking almost guilty.

"Thanks," he said, "For everything, I mean. These things are nasty to deal with on your own, and… This was cool. How’d you catch it, anyway?”

“I didn’t,” said Michael. "Not until you thought I did." Gerry's smile grew immediately less awkward.

“Oh, you prick!” he laughed. “I take it back, I'm leaving you a bad yelp review. You specifically."

“Now who’s going to be in trouble with Gertrude?” said Michael, exactly as Gertrude Robinson opened the door from the other side.

Michael stared at her.

She stared at Gerry.

Gerry stared at blood-soaked paper that covered the wastepaper bin he was cradling

“For both your sakes,” Gertrude said after a long few seconds, “It had better be someone not in this room.”

To his credit, Michael waited a solid ten minutes to confront Gertrude after she’d finished escorting Gerry from the building. Gertrude never got into the habit of announcing her assistants before they entered her office. She found it terribly childish whenever James did it to her, and suspected that she would have come to the same conclusion even without the poor example. She did, however, give herself a leisurely minute or two to shuffle away some sensitive documents when she clocked Michael bearing down the hall towards her.

“It’s open,” she called out when he knocked. As he entered, Gertrude noticed a particular nervous energy that meant he was upset about something, like there wasn’t room for all of his emotions inside of his preposterously tall body.

“Right,” he said. “Okay. So. I think it’s about time we had a chat about the elephant in the archive.”

Gertrude adjusted her glasses at him. “Would this elephant happen to be a young man with a talent for property damage? Possibly of the gothic variety?”

“Yes,” Michael hissed, as though it was some kind of secret. He nudged the door mostly closed behind him. “Gertrude, you have- There’s just, a child, around, setting things on fire.”

“You know, I’m surprised that you went through the trouble of making me tea if you’re really that cross with me,” said Gertrude. Michael stood dumbly for a moment, the two steaming mugs in his hands held steadily as anything.

“Of course I made tea,” he said, scowling. “I’m not an animal.” He pushed Gertrude’s mug across the desk, sitting across from her with his own.

“Gerard is an associate that I picked up outside of work,” Gertrude explained calmly. Michael looked confused at the name for a moment, briefly enough that Gertrude didn’t feel the need to clarify. “It suits my needs to have contacts with different areas of expertise. I fear the Institute attracts a specific type of employee.”

“I get that,” said Michael. “I’ve met Dekker, he’s… very Dekker. What’s concerning is how this one’s barely old enough to buy beer.”

"And I suppose you think I'm taking advantage of that?" asked Gertrude.

"No, I- I just have a lot of questions," Michael said adamantly. Gertrude smiled at that. A very specific type of employee, indeed. "Where did you find him? Where are his parents? Do they know he's working here, with you? Does anyone know?"

It took some reasonably complex maths to determine what Gertrude could tell Michael without breaking him. The illusion of her own innocence was too precious to give up over an argument like this, and if he really pressed the matter she could just put a little more effort into keeping Gerard out of the archive. Michael was easy to lie to. He wanted to believe whatever Gertrude decided to tell him. It was, at the end of the day, the crux of their professional relationship.

All the more reason to use up her goodwill sparingly. Besides; the truth would be just as easy to believe, filtered properly.

“That is Eric Delano's son,” Gertrude told him. “His mother passed away recently. I was in a position to help, and he's been quite eager to return the favor. I doubt very much that he'd stay if he didn't enjoy the work.”

Michael’s mouth actually popped open in surprise. “That’s little Gerry?”

“I suppose,” said Gertrude.

Michael was the only one in the archive who had actually liked Eric Delano personally. On some level, Gertrude was aware of that. She hadn’t disliked him- had even mourned him, in her own way. But she wasn’t in the business of fostering friendships under the best of circumstances, which this was most certainly not. In that respect, Michael was her exact opposite. Eric had been content to let him show it. It had seemed a cruel joke to Gertrude after Eric died, but seeing the spark of hope in Michael’s eyes now made her reconsider.

“He’s so tall,” was all Michael could manage to say, as though that was some deeply impressive accomplishment.

“Yes, that does tend to happen,” Gertrude said mildly. “I won’t try to keep you away from him. Not unless he asks me to. But I would suggest you be a bit more careful. He’s rather forgetful, and if I've given him particular safety precautions for an assignment, I wouldn't trust him to pass them on to you."

“Wh- um. I sort of feel like I should be the one keeping him safe?” Michael stammered.

Gertrude surveyed Michael thoroughly. He had clearly not brushed his hair in several days, opting to run his fingers through it until it was as distractingly large as it was yellow and curly. His faded blue sweater vest had only barely enough professional weight to conceal the fact that the button-up shirt underneath was decorated with very small cartoon puppies. There was a blood splatter on his sleeve that he either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t been able to wash out.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

#the magnus archives #fanfiction #hiiiii guuuuuuys #fair warning the timeline I've approximated here kinda puts gerry/Michael off the table #but if all goes well I'll get to some Jon/Gerry and it'll be cute as hell

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sugar-petals · 5 years

Text

the scaffolding (m)

⌞ Jungkook paints your house. He blocks the panoramic view. You take no issue with that.

September. The first week. The weather is stable since Thursday, a lot of tourists are in town. Your phone won’t stay silent either. Clients, clients, clients. There’s not a single unhurried day in your house. You tell yourself to stay focused.

Because nature still inspires best, the windows to the first floor home office enable you to glance across an ample panorama. A lake, mountains in the distance, meadows, some occasional mist in the mornings although the sun does come out later quite a lot.

A very rural outlook, mature. And yet, it’s been boring you as of lately. You need some aesthetic change in your life. But since you can’t roll your desk to the other side of the house — where the windows aren’t as large anyways — and can’t really move the mountains aside either, you dare an experiment. A designer thinks in counterintuitive terms. What if you change something about what you project outward to the landscape instead of altering the landscape itself? The idea is to hire someone who will paint your house in an interesting color.

The legal framework is loose enough for you to go with a very deep cobalt blue type of shade. Friendly and upbeat Kim Seokjin from the local painter’s bureau, Kim Constructions, invites you for discussing the details and going through color books. The resulting sum is quite hefty since your house is moderately large with rather complicated architecture to climb around, but everyone at the bureau is very helpful. September is the perfect time of the year. Seokjin arrives two days later to inspect the building from the outside, taking notes, then asks a few questions about the history of the house, looks around again, and vanishes as silently as he arrived. When you glance out of the window seven days after, there’s already a scaffolding in place. Deckings, ties, braces, and transoms everywhere. While you’re busy editing flyers for the upcoming winter festival, there’s plenty of hammering, van maneuvering, and more loud motion outside.

While you did want something new to quench the boredom, now you believe it backfired in the worst of ways since painting sure will take a while. Instead of feeling inspired, all you are is distracted. You do ponder moving your tablets, the laptops, the screen, and the other paraphernalia for the time being. But yet, another client rings through and asks whether you can meet the deadline for the wedding cards. You say yes, they’re almost done, you print them in two days, goodbye, you’ve asked for the fifth time. Moving the office won’t get rid of the nervous wreck type of callers either, no amount of reassurance ever helps. it’s starting to rub off on you, in fact. So you plug your headphones in and distract yourself from the distraction outside, and have a reason to ignore the phone blowing up every twenty minutes. Anything of importance would come via email anyways.

You drag fonts around the screen and adjust colors when a shadow steps in between you and the 11 AM sun outside. It startles you to the point of almost falling off your chair. It’s a brunette guy in a red tank top, bib, moderately tall, carrying a full bucket of paint toward the right side of the scaffolding. Judging by how he balances along the scene and then disappears, the guy didn’t notice you. The flyers aren’t so important anymore. You put down your headphones and try to glance across the room, toward the corner of the window where he went out of sight but not out of mind. And he does come back a minute later, without the bucket. This time, the guy gazes into your direction. He looks surprised. A feeble greeting hand, a bow, you bow back, then nod. Expressionless staring. He gestures around with a paint roller in his left hand. Then he moves on. You’re quite puzzled. He seems to be the worker, and you know that there are about three of them, that’s responsible for your side of the house where the office is.

It’s hard dragging fonts again, and the music stays off. Another anxious client’s call is quite convenient to make it look like you’re all professional and busy when the guy returns peeking across the scaffold on a ladder with a mixing laddle, and fumbling around with a trim guide. You don’t want to disturb the workers. At the same time, you want to look at him. The client, Mister Park, keeps on babbling about how he needs his fancy bright website banners by the end of the month, that his revenue depends on it, and only calms down once you send him a screenshot about how much you’re already advanced.

In the meantime, the brunette guy is gone again. Seokjin is on the scaffold now, but you can only see his arms stirring paint. The flyers are half done by the end of the hour, your tea cup is empty, and you figure it’s time to go to the kitchen to get yourself another drink. Hungry you are not yet, but already play with the thought of throwing some noodles in the Wok later for lunch at 1 PM, with some leftovers and a spicy sauce. Once the tea bag blurs out the hot water in your mug into a deep fruity strawberry red, you pace around the house, smartphone switched on, going through your social media. Nothing of real importance. A few likes on there, a comment here. More emails waiting. You end up strolling to the balcony —

And walk in on the guy, back turned to you. Pulling off his tank top standing on the first floor scaffold, and tossing it down to land on the hood of the Kim Constructions van. Your sharp exhale makes him flinch and turn around within the blink of an eye. His voice, high-pitched, cracks in a matter of seconds.

“I’m, I’m sorry! Thought you were workin’ on the other side!”

He covers his chest with both arms crossed before it.

Don’t look at his body. Don’t look at his body. He’s not comfortable with it.

You’re startled for a solid moment, too. Frozen.

“I, uh, made some tea,” you shove the mug toward his direction, eye to eye, desperate not to trail off below. “It’s very cold in September. I mean, out here.”

“Yes, it’s cold,” the guy says, pretty much sweating, but he takes the cup anyways, further disclosing his torso. You keep your head up stiff.

Don’t look at his body. Just a painter doing his job. Relax. You gave him a drink, that’s all.

“Really sorry, I hope the tea is okay.”

“Thank you, Miss Y/L/N, you didn’t have to do that. And I’m just a klutz, just walkin’ around like this. I hope I don’t cause an inconvenience. That’s too kind, you really didn’t have to prepare tea.”

You shake your head with too much vehemence for it to be normal. The guy starts sipping from the cup and almost burns his lips, but tries to play it off immediately by nodding at you more then necessary.

“I just saw you’re working hard, and Seokjin, I think, he can have a cup, too? There’s someone else, too, your co-workers—”

“Namjoon. But I think he’s allergic. Yeah. All sorts of allergies.”

“Oh, allergic. Sorry for that. And you are?”

“JK. Jungkook, um. Seokjin is always callin’ me JK. And Kookie, he thinks I look like one.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m not allergic to cookies.”

“Me neither!”

Someone shouts from the other side of the house. Jungkook looks around.

“Uh, I gotta go. See you, Miss! I mean, if you want! I let that cup cool here, I pick it up in a minute.”

And he sprints around the corner. The scaffolding still vibrates after he’s gone and you hear a discussion from the East side of the house. You click the balcony door shut and sink down in the living room on the carpet. What on earth does he make you say. What on earth did he say. This JK guy. Allergic to kookies. Allergic to tea. What on earth. At least you managed to get a conversation together instead of awkward silence. So, Jungkook is his name. Seokjin thinks he looks like a cookie. But Jungkook is not allergic to that. And it’s icy cold in September, of course, especially when he walks around without his tank top. All that staring at screens has been making you dizzy.

You drink a glass of juice in the kitchen, grab your light-weight beige jacket, phone, tablet, and exit the house for a walk. Gladly, Kim Construction’s van parked at the other end of the house where Jungkook likely still climbs around. You can go to the lake and get moving, all day in a seat won’t do your body any good. Any important task you can do on your tablet anyways. And pass the time. You think about how bizarre it must have been for Jungkook to first get caught in the middle of stripping, being offered a teacup as a lousy excuse, almost burning his tongue, and having to hear about cold weather with the sun out.

Mister Park calls when you observe toddlers collecting stones at the beach, and the animals that make them wonder. He wants a certain color adjustment, the theme has changed, the mood has to be different. Even brighter, everything. The changes you can employ through your tablet, but not actually alter your very own mood until you get the idea to visit an ice cream parlor about two hours later. It’s their last day, they’re closing down until the end of May next year. For a reason easily explicable to you after thinking twice, you order a strawberry ice cream sundae. A big portion, with fruit, because the Wok— you postponed.

All because you thought your panorama was boring and wanted a blue house. Sitting at the dock seems to bring up more worries than that, just being completely thrown off balance, not having your shit together. Eating strawberries at least makes you a little more tolerable to yourself at least. You wish you could mute your phone to avoid further pestering by client XYZ asking for a new layout until Friday. But who could blame them. Their expectations were high, too. All you can do it type around on your tablet to get the wedding cards finalized with the right type of swirl in the golden frames. The children play and fool around against the raging will of their respective parents, but they don’t care. They keep on throwing stones into the water until they’re satisfied. The sundae is gone all too soon and you’re still hungry.

You take a picture of the orange, crimson sun lowering itself onto the horizon, the lighthouse from the harbor at the outer end, with sailing boats, and of course, the mountains. Maybe it’s a picture Jimin’s banners could look good with, you realize, and zoom in. You almost overlook it, but at a second glance, you see a familiar red shade on the harbor wall. HEX #ED2939, imperial red. You know that one from somewhere. Putting the tablet down, you gaze where you believe the color is supposed to be down the docks. Quite far away, near the lighthouse in fact, but you do see a silhouette. Now you decide to walk closer. That red is really striking, resembling the dusky sky. Coming closer, the silhouette turns and waves at you .

“Good to see you! Y/N! How’s it goin’?”

It’s Jungkook, looking a bit silly with paint on his cheeks, and a flat white box in his hands. It really is gigantic. He sits at the dock in black sweatpants, seemingly watching birds by himself.

“After-work hours?”

At first, you hesitate, but then crouch down on the harbor wall next to him, legs crossed. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand. You can smell that he reapplied whatever spray deodorant was likely available in the van.

“We finished the Northern side an hour ago or so. But, uh, you look more exhausted than any of us!”

“I don’t know. And good job, Seokjin didn’t lie about being fast.”

“Have a slice,” Jungkook opens the white box for you to peer into. Now you realize what it’s for. Pizza Funghi. “We ordered way too much. And Namjoon was havin’ an allergic reaction.”

Jungkook’s mindless nodding returns when you make a ‘really, can I?’ glance at the pizza.

“What reaction? He’s allergic to pizza?”

“Oh, I think I have to explain that,” Jungkook tugs at the hems of his tank top. “It’s some sort of insider joke. Namjoon’s on a diet since he ate and drank too much at the summer festival. Or fasting, we don’t get it. Whenever he sees foods and drinks he freaks out. Jin came up with that joke, don’t ask me why.”

In passing, he hands you a napkin for your lap.

“Wasn’t the summer festival exactly about food and drink? The slogan was culinary joys or something.”

The pizza is pretty crispy when you bite into it. Jungkook looks at you munch with big eyes.

“You got some memory right there. I don’t even remember whether I went there or not!”

“I designed the posters,” you mumble, “that’s what I’m busy with in the office.”

“Hey, that’s a cool job. Wish I did that. Been dreamin’ of some more artistic work.”

“Sure, we can swap. I climb on the ladders with a hammer, you take phone calls.”

“Not good at that. I’d just collapse. You likin’ the pizza? Take the rest if you want.”

Jungkook parts his bangs with a hand, getting the strands out of his eyes. His eyebrows are quite strong, unlike his soft eyes looking at you from their corners because Jungkook faces the lighthouse, letting his legs dangle off the dock’s edge.

“Topping’s nice and chewy,” you rub the corners of your mouth with the napkin and get another slice. “You enjoyed your tea?”

“Definitely warm now. Jin was lookin’ at me weird and asked where it’s from.”

“I’ll get you two some more tomorrow. Is peppermint okay? Running out of strawberry tea.”

“As long as we leave Namjoon alone with his water bottles and apples, you can do just about anythin’.”

The children’s laughter disappears. You finish the third slice when the sun is close to setting. Even the bustling people from the ice cream parlor disperse, and the staff cover the windows with curtains from the inside. Jungkook makes you laugh when, accompanied by funny faces, he reduces the giant pizza cardboard box to nothing but a ball of paper with bare hands, and tosses it right into a bin — ironically, the wrong one for plastic. After tucking it into the adjacent paper can, alongside the napkin, Jungkook balances on the dock and talks about Namjoon’s whimsical adventures on the festival where his shades flew off on a carousel until you suggest to go to the lighthouse.

“Want a good picture I can use for an edit. Maybe from the top. The lantern room has a railing all around. Probably a good view.”

Jungkook agrees quite heartily, but once you do reach the white tower, perhaps 45 feet high, any rattling at the door latch is futile.

“Closed,” Jungkook sighs. “For ages, I guess. It doesn’t look functional. I’ve never seen a keeper around here anyways.”

But you already point to the left-hand side of the lighthouse that faces the sea.

“Talk about ladders. Look at that.”

“Huh?”

“There’s nobody around.” You tuck your tablet into the inside chest pocket of your jacket.

Jungkook gazes around.

“Oh... I get what you mean. Anythin’ for a good shot,” he advances, testing out the metal steps planted to the outside of the lighthouse in regular gaps. “It’s not much different from a scaffoldin’, I think.”

“My very thoughts. Are the steps not rusty or slippery?”

“Not really, just a bit narrow, kinda antique. But it’ll do. For me it’s easy at least. But are graphic designers always that reckless?”

“My clients depend on it. We gotta be quick before it sets, I need the colors to be bright.”

Jungkook already climbs a few test steps up and down. It looks more than agile.

“Wait, I figure this out,” he fumbles around, relocates his balance back and forth. “Can you do this?”

“No, I ain’t stupid. If you can carry me, we’re faster, too.”

Jungkook takes the final step with a cough. You unwind your iron clasp around his hip and neck. He still smells like that deodorant. Even up here, where the wind carries all scent away fast. You both climb over the railing, the lantern room right before you.

“Hey, we’re not dead! That was awesome. Athletics 101!”

“Doin’ this every day,” Jungkook fastens his tank top, bashful now. “Gotta be good at least somethin’.”

You holding onto him caused the top to slip sidewards. It almost makes you forget to take the picture until he points at your jacket where the tablet is stored.

“Your turn, Miss.”

“Clouds look just right,” you nod, “was a good idea.”

Click. A quick shot for a start. Click. One with longer exposure time. Click. You turn the tablet by 90°. Click. Now diagonal. You crop the second last picture, then change a filter, add text, ponder for half a minute, then create a panoramic view. Jungkook watches with intent, picking at the paint on his cheeks without even noticing. You change positions three times to look for a better angle, without the railing in the way. Concentration. You hold the tablet still.

“Never knew how this works,” he ruffles his hair around a few feet to the right. “Looks like one hell of a job.”

You tuck away your tablet again, realizing that the brightness of the horizon already fades. The five pictures have to suffice.

“Hopefully. Only worried about getting down again.”

“I’ll figure this out.”

Jungkook, instead of going to the railing the way you expected it, walks to the lantern house. Indeed, hidden by white paint, there’s a door. He twists the knob at the very side twice, then frowns a little, changes directions, walks to the harbor side of the platform. You can hear a knocking, clattering, then a screeching noise.

“Come around if you’re finished! Found somethin’. Way down.”

His voice is a little silent given that the breeze is strong. But you do walk half the circular to reach him. He squats down at an open hatch in the floor.

“No ladder. But I think the room down there isn’t too steep.”

“Hey, you genius! What’s that?”

“The livin’ quarters. Sure we find a key there to exit the lighthouse from the inside. Don’t know how else.”

“But you really wanna get in there, like, fall? It does look steep! And how can I—”

Jungkook already rubs his palms against each other, bends his knees three times, then sits legs downward at the edge of the square opening.

“I think pizza makes people do reckless things in general,” he hums to himself, then glides off the hatch into the room. The rebound isn’t as loud as you thought. You gaze down the hatch to see Jungkook, already upright, pop and gyrate his knees, then stretch his arms toward you.

“O.K.,” he nods his head, bangs swiped to either side of his face.

“Just the same as you did?”

“Part your legs a bit. Don’t wanna get knocked out. Catch you halfway, arms forward. And don’t bite your tongue or somethin’. Other than that, hm. Guess that’s it.”

“Take this first,” you unzip your jacket, cast it off backwards, then let it hang down as far as the length of your right arm permits. The tablet weighs it down quite a lot. Jungkook plucks it out of the air like it’s nothing, rests it to his side, yet out of reach. He rubs his palms against each other again.

“Don’t think too much, Miss Y/N.”

“Oh man, poor pizza in my stomach,” you sit down at the edge now, leg to either side parted wide, arms forward. Jungkook stretches his hands further up toward the hatch opening.

“Think you’re good to go.”

“Get ready.”

And you slip down.

Jungkook’s exhale doesn’t reach the outside world. Instead, you’re the one to breathe out groaning. Holding on tight. With his torso between your legs, rock-hard.

“Oh gosh, hurts! Oh, fuck!”

A quick sting of pain. When you feel your hands at the back of his neck, finally, you gather your senses. Look down. He did catch you. He did. Jungkook keeps on muffling.

“You okay?”

You lean back to un-burry his face from your breasts.

“Boobs are a curse! Ouch, ugh.”

Jungkook lets you down, slowly. The inside of your thighs glide off his waist.

“Rest for a moment, Y/N. That takes a minute.”

“I quit my dream of climbing around.”

“You’re no athlete. I practice this all the time, too. There’s a bed over there.”

The pain still remains. Your eyes dart around the living quarters. The room is surprisingly spacious, perhaps because it’s rounded. The keeper left everything in perfect order. Equally, the bed looks like a promising comfort.

“Don’t beat yourself up, my face was just in the way,” Jungkook removes the bed’s duvet with its layer of dust on it, then sits at the edge, eagle eyes on how you lower yourself, then lay down on the mattress.

“Give me a second,” you groan into your sleeve. “Feel like passing out. Shit is like a groin kick.”

“If you distract yourself, it’s easier. Takes your mind off. Just tell me.”

Hesitation. But your mind shortcuts right away.

“Just— Come over. I need your hands.”

Jungkook swiftly gets his Timbs off. They tumble next to your jacket on the ground.

“What should I do,” he moves closer, kneeling next to your torso. You can feel his warmth.

“Here,” you point at your sternum. Jungkook takes his right to hover above the spot, palm facing downwards. His left hand is propped up beside your shoulder, creating a dent you sink down with.

“Put it— Like this?”

“Back and forth. Like, massaging or something.”

“Got it.”

He is very warm. And it helps. The sting, with every rub, eases. His palm is very broad, but light on your body. You can smell his deodorant again, but with a bit of sweat mixing in. Tinged bitter, but still sweet. You like it. Perhaps he wasn’t so wrong about distraction. Perhaps you were not so wrong about boredom. His touch takes away from the tightness in your chest the longer he circles his fingers into the spot between your breasts that gently part for his motions.

“Feels better, Kookie. Keep on.”

“Okay.”

Jungkook continues rubbing until the pain is wearing off, numbing, at least. The way he retreats his hand makes the bed shake a little because he shifts his weight, and the dent is gone. You’re looking at him now—

Something clinks on the floor. Strangely metallic. A noise more silent than you actually thought it was. You’re both startled. Looking around. Everything is blank.

“What was that? Is someone coming? Shit, shit!”

“Miss, wait a second.”

He peeks over the edge of the bed where the noise came from. You sit up. He’s chuckling. Then, he picks up a little silver item.

“Look at that.”

“Oh?”

He’s laughing.

“I think that’s the key. Keeper stored it under the mattress.”

“That was the shock of my life!”

“Your chest’s better, then,” Jungkook picks up the key and drops it on the dusty nightstand. “Gotta say, that was, uh, I was bein’ stupid. Namjoon knows how to catch paint buckets like that, he’s probably the only one lookin’ graceful.”

“To each their own talent. To each their own mishap. His shades flew off.”

You kick off your own trainers, adjust on the bed after removing the dust-covered pillow gently not to cause a stir in the air.

“We were searching for an hour or so,” Jungkook scratches his head. “It flew far, you know.”

“He seriously needs to read the safety instructions next time.”

“We climbed on a lighthouse, can’t preach to him ‘bout that I think. Pics will be pretty cool though.”

“I’ve had my climbing, you had some art stuff today.”

“Always learnin’ somethin’.”

The duvet is back in place, as is the pillow, the hatch closed with the makeshift help of a broomstick. You tap down the stairwell that smells a lot like sea, jacket back on, with the light from your tablet illuminating the way down. Jungkook, in his Timbs, is ready to dodge bats or spiders, but the staircase isn’t too webby and dusty. Only the stairs are a bit grimy.

“Need the biggest shower of my life,” he grits, balancing downwards.

“I can drive you home if you want. How did you get to my house earlier?”

“By bike, it’s parked at the harbor. My house isn’t too far away. Gettin’ there in ten minutes.”

“Ah, okay.”

After you get to the bottom of the tower, the key turns in the lock with less ease than you thought. Instead, you turn the knob and the door pops open with a creak.

“Opens from the inside only,” Jungkook huffs out a laugh. “I’ll get the key back to where it was.”

You hand him the tablet faithfully, and in the matter of a minute, he’s back to hand it to you. The bike in question is indeed not very far. As red as his tank top, chained before the beautiful mountain scenery. There’s fog coming up already.

“Don’t have any tea available I’m afraid.”

“Will get warm when I’m pedallin’,” he removes the lock from the bike with a number code, then puts on the helmet attached to it. “See you tomorrow, Miss Y/N. I try not to walk past your office too often.”

“Oh, my clients will be more than satisfied, I’ll have more time to lean back. Got a lot of work done today. If you want, I cook something in the Wok for everyone at lunch. Tit for tat. I liked your pizza, Kookie.”

“Tit for tat?”

“You don’t know that expression? It’s not because of my boobs. They’re fine now.”

“Ah— uh, sorry for that again.”

“Tit for tat just means, ah, compensation. Back and forth. I’ll treat you to something, hm.”

“Sure it’s gonna be delicious.”

“We’ll help Namjoon get over his allergy as well. I’m confident.”

Jungkook’s eye smile appears under the brim of his helmet. You ask whether you can take a picture with your phone before he leaves. Oh sure, Miss, he says, adjusts the tank top. You zoom in a bit, center his face. There’s still a bit of blue paint on his nose. Click!

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sophygurl · 5 years

Text

WisCon43 - re: programming

I’ve been thinking about conversations (both online and off) held this year about WisCon’s programming - lack of certain kinds of diversity, reasons why that might be, and what to do about it. As someone who writes up a lot of panels, goes to a lot of panels, sits on a lot of panels, and although I didn’t mod this year - has moderated her fair share of panels, I’ve been thinking about it from all of those perspectives.

My perspective is also of someone who has a balance of ways in which I am and am not marginalized. I won’t list every single thing as that would be tedious and non-productive, but to share some of the biggies: I’m disabled, queer, and genderqueer; I am also white, cis, and neither an immigrant or the child of immigrants. If I get stuff wrong in any of the areas I’m privileged in, I very much welcome correction and feedback. Also, none of us these communities are monoliths - so conversation from all angles is always helpful.

To those who may have missed some of these conversations, my impression is that it flowed from a few starting points: 1) people new/new-ish to WisCon who therefore weren’t as aware of how programming works differently at this 100% volunteer-run con, 2) people unaware that certain demographics of the con (specifically mentioned were poc - particularly blpoc, and trans/non-binary folk) have grown tired of being The Diversity People on panels, 3) some incidents at last year’s con - while handled by safety and anti-abuse teams well - did contribute to folks from certain marginalizations either not wanting to come or at least not wanting to actively participate in programming this year.

I don’t have a lot of thoughts on those points. I have never been on the concom, don’t know a lot of about the behind the scenes stuff that goes on, and while there are certainly things we can do (”we” meaning both the folks officially doing stuff bts and all of us as a community who care about the con) to make the con feel and be safer for everyone and to encourage more people to participate - we certainly can’t make people continue to do frustrating 101-level work educating people about their own identities year after year.

What I DO have thoughts on are the other starting points some of these conversations flowed from, which I perceived to be: 1) this panel description touches on specific marginalizations but the issues affecting those marginalizations were not brought up by panelists, 2) when someone from the audience asked questions relating to those marginalizations, the panelists didn’t know what to say, 3) when there were people with and without certain privileges on a panel - sometimes the people with privilege talked over the people without them.

These are all very fixable issues, and indeed I have seen these issues dealt with in very positive and productive ways in the past, so I wanted to share a little bit about my experiences when I’ve thought it has gone well.

Panel Writing.

The first stage of programming at WisCon is submitting panel ideas to the programming department. I write a lot of panels up (ask the programming department lol), and I write up panels on a broad variety of topics from Important Issue panels to fun squee panels. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when writing up panels with a nod to intersectional feminism and diversity inclusion:

When writing a panel about a Serious Issue, make sure there is some language about the ways in which other intersections are impacted by the Issue. For example, if I’m writing up a panel about queerness, I might slip in a phrase also asking the panelists to think about ways in which race or class affect the Queer Issue at hand. That way it’s baked in. Hopefully (and you can’t control this if you’re not on the panel yourself - but hopefully), the moderator and panelists will take those intersectional issues into consideration in their discussion.

When writing up a more fun fannish panel, STILL make sure to include a statement or two asking the panelists to consider ways in which Fan Thing touches on issues of race, gender, what have you. For example, “yaddayadda fun thing! Also, how do we feel about the show’s treatment of race?” Again, the idea is to bake it right in there so that the panelists are already (hopefully) thinking about those things and won’t be caught off guard when the audience is wanting or expecting them to discuss it a little bit.

When suggesting a panel, you can suggest potential panelists. You can either do this specifically as in “Person A would be a great addition to this panel!” or more generally with a note asking “please make sure at least one panelist is X identity”. None of these things are guarantees, of course, but it helps programming see what you’re going for. Another idea for when it’s essential that a panel is comprised of specific folk is to hand-staff the panel. That means it’s not open for volunteers and only the people who have been pre-selected can sit on the panel. (I believe this is how panels at many other cons are naturally run?? It’s just not the default for WisCon where we like lots of volunteers and self-selection.)

Another thing to keep in mind is thinking about who your potential audience is going to be. You can delineate in the panel description whether this is meant to be a 101 or higher level discussion. You can bake in the idea that this panel is jumping off from a panel held in a previous year and the panelists won’t be doing much in the way of backgrounding that. You can say “this is NOT a panel about ...” to make it clear this panel is about Issue Y and only about Issue Y. There are lots of ways to make it clear what the panel should and shouldn’t be about, which again, is not a guarantee, but certainly helps move the panel in the right direction.

Panel formation.

When asking to be on a panel, you can make a note about why you want to be on it, or why you want to moderate it. This is a handy place to speak about your identity pieces (IF you want - nobody is forced to do this). For example, on a panel about disability, I might type in a little note talking about my specific disabilities and possibly how my queerness informs my disability. That way, if there are ten people with similar disabilities as mine asking to be on the panel - programming can decide that maybe I don’t need to be there. Or if no one else has mentioned queerness as part of their identity, they might put me on to make sure that’s a voice being included.

When you get assigned to a panel, you see the names and emails of the other folks on the panel with you. If you’ve been coming to the con for awhile, you might be able to see right then where a problem area might be - like, holy cow this panel about TV show with black main character is skewing very white! Or perhaps that panel about the intersection of X and Y has mostly folks with experience X and not Y! What do? Well, there’s a few things that I’ve seen done/have done.

One thing is to reach out and see if people from the underrepresented group want to join you on the panel! You can do this quietly by asking folks you know personally, put out calls on social media, ask programming to help you locate some folks, or even put up notes in the green room once at the con asking for folks with identity Y to volunteer.

I’ve also been on panels where none of the above happened, but I’ve looked out into the audience and seen friends with Identity Y who I know are usually up for talking at a moment’s notice and asked if they’d join us. (This can backfire if your friend with Identity Y is just sick to death of talking about their identity, but if you ask it in a nice enough way, hopefully they’ll feel comfortable saying nah, I’m here to listen this time)

This can also happen as the email conversations begin and everyone starts sort of awkwardly saying things like “well, I think we should talk about asexuality but I’m not ace...” and suddenly you realize you’ve left out an important part of the conversation. As in the above scenario, sometimes you can reach out and include that perspective. But sometimes you can’t. What do then?

One thing I’ve seen done/have done is to have the moderator acknowledge the issue at the start of the panel. “We all understand that an ace perspective, or perspective X, is an important one for this topic, but none of us are ace, so we’re just gonna do our best on that part and if we mess it up, we hope someone with that perspective will correct us!” This accomplished a few things: 1) it lets the audience know that you know there is a flaw there so they’re not sitting there wondering why tf you’re not talking about Thing X as much as they’d expected, 2) allows folks in the audience with perspective X the opportunity to speak up if they’re feeling like they want their perspective shared (example: “you mentioned that none of you are ace, I’m asexual and wanted to share that...”). It might be important for the mod to even seek out “comment not a question” in those specific instances.

Sometimes, as happened my very first time moderating, it turns out that someone in the audience has a very unique and important perspective and the rest of the panelists just kinda do chinhands listening to them for a bit and THAT IS OKAY.

You might even get all the way to the panel and not realize until someone in the audience speaks up that you are lacking an important perspective. What do??

This weekend, I witnessed a panel where this happened and the panelists all just asked the audience member if they’d come up and be on the panel with them! Now, like the example above of asking a friend in the audience at the start of the panel, this won’t Always work. Perhaps the audience member does not Want to share their perspective - they only want to make sure that perspective is being covered. That is 100% fair! No one should feel forced or pressured to insta-join a panel! But giving someone the option can be a great way around accidental gaps in inclusion.

Doing the panel.

Now, it’s not always possible to flesh your panel out with diverse perspectives. Despite trying all of the other things, perhaps no one with Identity X wants to sit on your panel. Or perhaps there are too many intersections for a panel of 6 to even cover all of them. Or maybe no one even realized how important Issue Y was to Panel Z until Panel Z got underway. But STILL there are things you, the panelists and moderator, can do!

The most important thing you can do is to make sure you’re prepared for the stuff baked into the panel. Even if you believe the make-up of the panel is sufficient to cover a specific issue, what if the 2 poc panelists end up unable to make it to the con or the 1 Deaf panelist got sick or the person you thought you remembered was Jewish - ooops turns out you had mistaken them for someone else? Listen, this stuff happens. So Be Prepared.

No, as a white person, I absolutely cannot and should not speak on the experiences of people of color. That would be wildly inappropriate. But what I can do, and try to do, is educate myself ahead of time on how the topic at hand affects or is affected by issues of race. If there are poc on the panel willing and able to touch on those things - perfect! Worst thing that happens is that I got a little more educated, which is the opposite of a problem anyway. But if it turns out that it’s only me and another white panelist and the audience is asking questions about race, I can at least say something like “from what I’ve read in this article/heard my poc friends saying/saw online from poc fans.... it seems like XYZ might be true but also could be a problem because of ABC”. Heavy disclaimers should abound, but, yes, it is possible to at least address an issue even if that issue doesn’t directly affect you. In fact, Tired Queer in the Corner might be really happy that you Straight Ally on the Panel did your homework.

If you can’t prepare - if an issue sneaks up on you - just be honest about that and still try to do your best! “Oh, wow, I just realized we never discussed in our pre-panel discussion how the issue of religion impacts this topic, but now that this audience member has brought it up - can any of us speak on that?” If it turns out that, no, none of us can speak on that - toss it to the audience. “Can anyone else address this?” Again, this is a potential backfire situation, but worse case scenario no one wants to address it, you can apologize, pledge to do better next time, and move on. The toss-it-to-the-audience approach also only generally works in smaller panels where audience participation is easily done. If you’re on a dais with a large crowd and no wireless mics - you might have to forgo that particular work-around.

Other options include post-panel discussions. Moderator: “We only have ten minutes left and we never did hit topic X. If anyone - panelists and audience alike - would like to discuss this, we can move into the overflow room to dig in deeper.” That’s one approach. Another is to take it to twitter, or other online discussion. “Sorry we didn’t get to any audience questions about Y - but please add your comments to the # and we’ll do our best to reply in the coming days!” Last year I moderated a panel with a lot of very intelligent and wordy panelists and we literally ran out of time right before I would have gone to audience questions. But that hashtag was busy and lots of us went to it after the panel and had some lovely conversations with some of our audience members that way. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s another way to try and get to the stuff that might otherwise be missed.

Also - be aware of your privileges and make sure you are privileging the voices of those you have privilege over. This weekend, I caught myself interrupting a fellow panelist of color and stopped mid-interruption, doing the sort of “no, continue” motion and set the mic down to make sure I didn’t do it again until they were finished. It happens to all of us, and most of us at WisCon are in positions where we have some and don’t have other privileges. As a panelist - try and remember where yours are and be mindful of when to stop talking.

As a moderator - you have to do this and Also keep in mind your fellow panelists intersections and possibly step in when you notice the white lady keeps monopolizing the conversation or the cishet dude to keeps talking over the queer woman. It’s part of the mod’s job to make sure everyone is heard, so if you don’t believe you’re capable of doing that part you need to either 1) ask someone to help you or 2) not moderate in the first place. [And BTW, asking for help is okay! We don’t all have the same skill sets, so asking one of your panelist buds to help you in an area you lack is not a bad thing to do!]

So those are some of my ideas on how to make sure more voices and types of voices are being heard in panels. I’d love if people added their own! Thanks to everyone who made it a priority for us to keep having these conversations.

#wiscon #wiscon 43 #cons #intersectionalty #wc43

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rolypolywl · 5 years

Video

youtube

Hello, and welcome to Roly-Poly weight loss. I’m your host, Roly-Poly.

Welcome to day 22!

And today is a weigh in day, so let’s see how that is going…. 270.

Not bad!

So today we’re going back to our routine, so let me start the timer.

Okay, so today I want to talk about step tracking. Now, if you’re like me, I’m sure you’ve heard that you’re supposed to walk 10,000 steps a day. Many fitness trackers, including my fitbit, have that as the default setting, so it seems pretty important.

Now, if you’re coming from a sedentary place, like many roly poly people, 10k steps just seems like a huge number! I was certainly not hitting that number when I first started walking.

In fact, I set my first fitbit at 5k steps, and worked up to getting that number. Then 6,000, then 5,000. There are still plenty of days when I don’t hit that number.

Now, when I was working at a more active job, and climbing all those stairs I’ve mentioned, I was usually hitting 6,000 consistently, and with a little effort I could hit 7,000 in a day.

I also, as I’ve mentioned, walked 5ks, which are 3.1 miles. If you have a particularly sedentary day, only hitting 1,000 or 2,000 steps, that hour of walking will bump you up to 7,000. At least it did for me.

I could only hit 10,000 if I was up on my feet all day, or walking in a 10k or something like that.

Roly Mama, in fact, has 5,000 as her goal, because she isn’t doing those long walks, and that’s a reasonable goal for her to hit in a day, provided she does a half hour walk.

Well, according to the Mayo Clinic, our numbers are pretty typical.

“The average American walks 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day, or roughly 1.5 to 2 miles. It's a good idea to find out how many steps a day you walk now, as your own baseline. Then you can work up toward the goal of 10,000 steps by aiming to add 1,000 extra steps a day every two weeks. If you're already walking more than 10,000 steps a day, or if you're fairly active and trying to lose weight, you'll probably want to set your daily step goal higher.”

But the’re still encouraging us to get to that 10,000. And Self pushes it even further.

“Fitness pros have been citing 12,000 steps as a new target, which begs the question: Is 10,000 steps just not good enough anymore? ” They interviewed two trainers who encouraged people to aim for 12,000 instead of 10,000.

MyFitnessPal sums up the issue pretty well.

“When you’re just starting an exercise program, you may not have the confidence or ability to get anywhere near 10,000 steps (even if you go for daily walks). This lofty goal might backfire as consistently falling short of your goals may discourage you from exercising. If you swim or cycle, those activities don’t register as steps, so your count for the day won’t accurately reflect in your activity level. Plus, if you get 10,000 steps just from walking to and from work, you may feel best when you get 15,000 or 20,000 steps per day, instead of stopping at 10,000. Ultimately, “tracking step count is highly individual and there’s no perfect number,””

Now, we’ve looked at research in the past that says that that half hour a day walk is what we need to become more healthy. If that only equals about 3,500-4,000, do we really need to hit 10,000 a day? That’s three half-hour walks a day! Or 12,000?

When you’re coming from a sedentary place, that seems insane. And just waiting for us to fail. Even the idea from the Mayo Clinic of adding 1,000 steps a day seems like a pretty steep incline. Do we really need to hit that target? And that quickly?

Well, it seems like the answer is no. And kind of yes.

Let’s start with “no.”

First, let’s look at where that 10,000 number comes from. Some scientific study, right? Yeah-no.

This article from The Atlantic actually gets to the origin of this number.

““In 1965, a Japanese company was selling pedometers, and they gave it a name that, in Japanese, means ‘the 10,000-step meter.’” Based on conversations she’s had with Japanese researchers, Lee believes that name was chosen for the product because the character for “10,000” looks sort of like a man walking. As far as she knows, the actual health merits of that number have never been validated by research.”

Yeah, that’s it. That’s where the 10,000 number comes from.

So now let’s look at the “yes”.

Now, since then, people have actually initiated studies that seem to validate this number, but Self points out a problem with that.

“It's important to note that while research in this area can provide interesting insight, there are some limitations. For example, if a study only looks at the benefits of 10,000 steps and doesn't compare it to other step counts, the research can't conclude how much better 10,000 steps is for a specific health outcome. (Or if there's even a difference at all.)”

For example, in one study, “overweight participants were asked to walk 10,000 steps daily for 12 weeks. The 30 participants who consistently reached that goal lost weight and had a decrease in anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue.”

But, aside from the fact that a pool of 30 people is insanely tiny to draw data from, the study doesn’t seem to have tested other areas. Maybe people who hit 7,000 consistently also had less weight, anxiety, and fatigue, just not as much.

Similarly, “A study where 355 participants were asked to take more than 10,000 steps a day found that there was a decrease in blood pressure among participants after six months.” Which is great news, but again there doesn’t seem to be any control group at a lower step count.

And that’s important for a number of reasons, as the Atlantic points out.

“That nuance can mean a lot to people who want to be less sedentary but aren’t sure how to start or whether they can do enough to make a difference, says Lindsay Wilson, a clinical professor of geriatric medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “I don’t think setting the bar at 10,000 steps is a very successful way to approach exercise,” she says. “Some people are not walkers. They don’t have safe neighborhoods, or they feel unsteady on sidewalks. You need to be more creative. Is this a person who needs to go to a gym class or the pool, or sit on a stationary bike?””

And Self adds, “It also depends on what other activities you're doing in a day. If you take an indoor cycling class or do a strength training workout, you may not rack up as many steps as you would if you went for a run or walked a lot one day. That doesn’t mean you’re being unhealthy or that the other activities you’re doing don’t "count"—especially if you're hitting those 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week.”

So are there any studies that look at lower step counts? Or just being more active in general? And, it turns out, the answer is yes!

For example, Self notes “One study showed that participants who reached 7,500 steps or more were less likely to report poor sleep, while those who reached 5,000 steps or fewer were more likely to report poor sleep.”

That shows a benefit at just 7,500 steps, up from 5,000. So that’s promising to those of us who are looking to incrementally increase our activity!

Harvard Professor I-Min Lee performed a study “observing the step totals and mortality rates of more than 16,000 elderly American women.”

As she explained to The Atlantic, ““The basic finding was that at 4,400 steps per day, these women had significantly lower mortality rates compared to the least active women,” Lee explains. If they did more, their mortality rates continued to drop, until they reached about 7,500 steps, at which point the rates leveled out. Ultimately, increasing daily physical activity by as little as 2,000 steps—less than a mile of walking—was associated with positive health outcomes for the elderly women.”

So there you have it, in this study, an increase as little as 2,000 steps showed improvement. If you’re the kind of person who struggles to get to 5,000 steps, don’t feel like you’re a failure for not getting to 10,000.

““I’m not saying don’t get 10,000 steps. If you can get 10,000 steps, more power to you,” says Lee. “But if you’re someone who’s sedentary, even a very modest increase brings you significant health benefits.””

Now, all that said, what can you do if you do want to increase your daily step count? Tracking your steps on a pedometer or fitness tracker can help, and adding a half hour daily walk - like we did for No Zero Day May - can certainly boost your numbers.

If you’re in the moderate area - 6,000-8,000, you should consider the app, StepBet.

It looks at your past activity and calculates an “active” and a “stretch” goal for you. Actives at minimum are 7,000 and Stretches are 9,000.

Then, you join a bet! Usually costing about $30-40 to enter, the standard format is 6 weeks, needing to hit your stretch goal twice, your active goal 4 times, and with one “free” day. If you can make those numbers for the whole time, you win a chunk of the pot!

There are also variations, such as shorter, 4 week bets, no stretch days, no free days, and similar. I loved doing these, because it was great motivation to get that last thousand steps in before bed if I was a little low.

And the extra money at the end was nice! Sometimes I only made $2 back over my bet, sometimes $10! The great thing was the guarantee. If you won you bet, you would always get your money back. They’ll forgo their own cut to make sure that all winners at least make their money back.

So if you complete the steps, you can’t lose!

And, as you finish stepbets, you become more active, and your active and stretch goals inch higher. It’s a great way to slowly (over a month, not a day), increase your step goals.

Again, however, the minimums are 7,000 and 9,000, so if you’re just hitting 5,000 a day comfortably, and stretching to 6,000, this might push you too far.

If you still want a little extra stepping motivation, but StepBet isn’t right for you, check out Charity Miles.

Regardless of your step count level, it will work for you. You pick the charity you want to support from your list, start up the tracker, and get walking! Or running, or biking, or whatever! They track all kinds of activities. And when you finish, their corporate sponsors will donate money to the charity of your choice!

You can even join teams and help support or compete against each other.

It is a great way to add an extra motivation to getting your daily exercise or steps!

And that’s it for today!

This has been Roly Poly Weight loss. As always, I am your host, Roly Poly. Please share your experiences with the hashtag #StepCount. You can even share your step goals or achievements. I’d love to see them!

And please join me next time!

#RolyPoly #exercise #weigh in #weight loss #losing weight #weightloss #workout #working out #fitness #Health & Fitness #Stepbet #CharityMiles #StepCount

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markablogs · 7 years

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Why you shouldn’t punch a Nazi ‘just cuz’

When I first saw the clips and memes of Richard Spencher getting punched it was good for a chuckle since I most certainly don’t like the guy or his ideas and I can’t say I feel sorry for him. But I was disturbed when it soon turned out that supposed progressives were not only applauding this behavior, but calling for more of it.

So, here’s my small effort to oppose such a mentality by telling you why one shouldn’t just punch a Nazi just for being a Nazi:

1. You guessed it: free speech

Here’s a thought: people have the right to be wrong. And they have a right to say wrong things. Now some will argue racism and homophobia and so forth is hate speech, and I would agree, but policing speech where definitions aren’t crystal clear (such as with threats of physical violence) can backfire badly.

Sure, today you may render expressing far right sentiments illegal, but what happens when that cat’s out of the bag and a right-wing government comes to power and the tables have turned? When they start, for example, passing laws that say criticizing religion is hate-speech? What happens when they start banning things like hip-hop for supposedly promoting violence? If you think that’s far fetched, look up what the PMRC was, read up on blasphemy laws in Ireland or Russia or or Spain, check out all these banned video games in Australia. Even in the west where free speech and freedom of expression is considered a pillar of society censorship absolutely happens, don’t give it more legs to stand on.

Either we allow free speech absolutely or free speech is subject to the whims of those in power. When has banning speech ever worked anyway? The South African government, for example, during the apartheid era was incredibly restrictive of information and controlling of media, but it didn’t work. Because speech and ideas cannot be restricted. Bad ideas have never been defeated by suffocating them with laws, but by better ideas! Yes, some times bad hateful ideas gain popularity, but if you look at history, as someone once said: “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, meaning that eventually right right ideas will come out on top, but people need to be given the option to come to that conclusion.

2. You by implication promote violence on a wider scale

Okay so there was a twitter thread going around about why it’s okay and should be encouraged to punch a Nazi: https://twitter.com/meakoopa/status/823319604386791424

In short, the person in the tweet argues that Nazism should not be included in the discourse because it as an ideology is inherently undemocratic as it (among other things) is an affront to a fellow citizens citizenship. Furthermore fascism wriggles its way to power by insisting it should be heard and then achieving critical mass. And thus Nazis need to be punched to prevent them from being relevant.

The problem with that is that there are quite a number of ideologies that fit the description of undemocratic and affronting fellow citizens. So if you assert that one group should be punched for this, by extension all of them should be.

Let’s take the example of homosexuality. Do you know how many Christians or Muslims would like to see it be punishable by law? Plenty. And unlike nazism, both today and in the past, these beliefs are put into practice wolrdwide:

(blues are good, yellow is bad, orange and red is horrible, click here for more details )

There are few things democratic or egalitarian in the holy books of the Semitic religions, and haven’t all theocracies risen to power by ‘insisting they should be heard and then achieving critical mass‘? Consider these Norwegian Muslims who consider themselves moderate and have no problem with the idea of queer people being banished or striking women (@1:05):

youtube

Are all you valiant Nazi-punchers going to be showing up at Islamic events like these and start punching Muslims? I hope not. Even the most fundamental person, as horrendous as their beliefs may be, so long as they’re not violating someone else’s rights, has the right to their belief and expressing this belief without getting punched. Like I said before, people have the right to be wrong, just not to the point of violence. And even if they did...

3. It’s not practical.

Speaking of attacking religious people - The Westboro Babtist Church (the the people with the ‘GOD HATES FAGS’ signs) have been assaulted during their appearances a couple of times. And in those moments the resolve of the WBC and the Phelps family was strengthened, they were not distanced from their ideology and came closer to the opposing side, it was the opposite. Fortunately many of the members left the church and what convinced them was not force and violence but good arguments and reason.

Richard Spencer and his supporters didn’t go home that day and started re-thinking their world views or were afraid to go outside the following morning. No, they felt satisfied that they were able to bring out the worst in their opponents. Learn from history a lil’ bit and remember that Nazis rose to power in the first place by convincing people that their opponents are violent and dangerous and they were the ones who would bring order and stability.

Also remember, these Nazi types are essentially activists. When’s the last time you heard an activist of any kind be deterred by violence? Would you give up the causes you believe in, be it gay rights or women’s rights or civil rights or animal rights, if getting hurt was a likelihood? Probably not. So what makes you think they would?

Perhaps you’ve heard the quote that ‘you can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea’ or ‘ideas are bulletproof’ or some variation of that notion. And it’s true. See, we can punch all of the Nazis, we can shoot all of the Nazis, we can gather all the Nazis up in death camps, but at the end of the day Nazism is an idea and the only way to fight an idea is with another idea. If Nazism could be physically stopped it would’ve happened during WW2, don’t you think?

Actually, here’s a sentiment I’ve seen a couple of times: “Used to be that when you punched a Nazi you got a medal!”

Well yes, because Nazis were armed and shooting at you. However if you attacked a bunch of unarmed Nazis that weren’t putting up a fight you would’ve been committing a war crime. Or maybe you think this is behavior becoming of a civilized society:

youtube

I sincerely hope not.

Fuckface Richard Spencer was just standing around answering questions, he was already being opposed by several people around him. Seems to me clocking him was unnecessary. Even if it was okay to attack someone who was not violent, you sure make yourself look like a douche. You know when cops pepper-spray people who are just walking by calmly because they’re annoyed by them? Like that.

4 And in closing...

Call me old fashioned, but I'm of the opinion that violence other than defense or self-defense is unacceptable. Violent attacks are not something a humanist civilized society should tolerate.

You might think it’s strange to end this with an MLK quote, but nothing could be more appropriate; Dr King believed that ‘hate cannot drive out hate’, he could’ve opposed the racists of his day with force, he could’ve told his followers to sucker punch segregationists, but he understood both from the compassion towards his fellow man and a practical standpoint that 'returning violence for violence multiplies violence’.

Punching a nazi doesn’t make you Indiana Jones, or Captain America, or Hellboy (I wish it did, I love Hellboy), it makes you someone who doesn’t believe in the power of their ideas; if you’re so convinced what you believe is better than Nazism, what are you so afraid of? Debate them, expose them for the morons they are, if you don’t allow these people to be part of a discussion they'll just fester in silence unchallenged and grow in numbers as a result. It’s really not that hard and it’s certainly better than perpetuating violence.

#Richard Spencer #Nazism #progressivism #free speech #politics #non violence

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kyanve · 7 years

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Weird Representation Nostalgia

Okay, somewhat embarrassing personal “why representation matters” from someone who has since figured things out as demi/gray-spec-pan/idefk I’m not here to argue which terms I’d use are valid or best suited.

I grew up in a Christian household that was more moderate when I was younger, but still kinda leaned conservative, and while there were a lot of things they were open minded on, there were still some problems. My parents would outright verbally fight toy store employees trying to “correct” me buying “boy toys”, I learned D&D at like, six, I was technically encouraged to read up on/learn about things including other religions and all even though it was always couched in a “so you can learn to think/choose for yourself and see why the clear choice is Christianity”....that last one backfired but it’s a story for another time.

They did, and still do, buy into the idea that homosexuality and non-blatantly-obvious-intersex-condition transgender is some kind of weird sin against god, fall for a lot of dumb slippery slope things/”it’s perversions and people being perverted”, etc..

(I MAY end up coming out to one of them before the summer’s out, but hahaha between them and living in rural Arizona I am definitely in the closet offline.)

My first exposure to homosexuality outside of church rhetoric was Mercedes Lackey and the Mage Wars/Heralds/etc. series. (I also was encouraged to learn to read young and to sit there with novels and dictionaries as soon as I was stubborn enough to try. That also probably backfired, honestly, considering, well, this story.)

I actually did come out of those books thinking about it, and sitting there pondering the disjoint between Vanyel and Firesong and all that and the rhetoric I was raised with, and how the rhetoric I was raised with was kinda cartoon-villain-ish and “Oh, this is a thing, these are people that happen to be attracted to/involved with other people same-gender but otherwise have relationships like anyone else” made a shit-ton more sense.

I haven’t read them in years, I have no idea how well they hold up as representation goes, but damned if those books didn’t actually pretty well help before I had any good resources on making me question and reject the Church Rhetoric “well be polite and kind to them but NEVER CONDONE THEIR SIN THEY CHOSE TO DO AND IT’S AN AWFUL AWFUL THING YOU SHOULD TRY TO CONVINCE THEM TO GIVE UP ON AND COME TO JESUS”, long before I hit high school/college and, well.

Ended up in situations where not fitting in with the local Baptist idea of “good Christians” meant that even though I was still at that point Christian, I was ostracized and attacked as “clearly a Satanist”, and my best, most reliable friends and the people who had my back were a bunch of neopagans, LGBT, atheists, and an ACTUAL Satanist. A set of stupid fantasy books were what taught me to just not bat an eyelid and go “oh, okay, people, not creepy pervert sinner abominations” at my bi roommate and the lesbian down the hall who used to poke her head in to check how I was doing when shit wasn’t going well.

Aaand also meant that when I realized I was, while usually disinterested, just as okay with the idea of going out with a girl as a guy etc., there was a LOT less freaking out than there probably would’ve been without the Gryphons And Talking White Horses being a thing from a fairly young age giving me a less screwed up frame of reference to start from when I DID start finding actual resources and meeting other LGBTQA people.

I give a lot of credit to Valdemar/Mage Wars because there just. Wasn’t much else. Like seriously for a lot of my life that was the only thing I read and watched and could find that addressed the issue at all that wasn’t pastors talking up hellfire and damnation about it. I honestly am glad that it was as big a part of my childhood as it was and had the impact it did because it HELPED, even if it was only one thing.

And this is why I will be deliriously happy to see things like not only “where was this fictional female character when I was 10″ (I’ve teared up watching Adventure Time b/c Princess Bubblegum alone would’ve done WONDERS for my childhood complex about ‘pink and feminine’ being the ENEMY and that’s not getting into things like ATLA and Steven Universe), but also anything in fiction that addresses LGBTQA and other ethnic groups as PEOPLE.

It makes it a hell of a lot easier for kids who ARE growing up with restrictive/prejudiced ideologies to start seeing the minorities as PEOPLE rather than weird caricatures, it makes it a hell of a lot easier for kids figuring out who and what they are to see THEMSELVES as people and not freak out about it as bad, and it makes it a whole lot easier for people who grew up in those places to finally meet a real person in the minority category and maybe see Person Like Beloved Fictional Childhood Character rather than “Weird Demonized Monster”.

#lgbtqa things #personal #reblogging is okay

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thegloober · 6 years

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How to Optimize Your Apology (Ep. 353)

“Offender-driven” apologies are the least effective at earning forgiveness: it’s clear you aren’t sorry for eating the furniture; you’re just sorry you got caught. (Photo: st0l1/Flickr)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “How to Optimize Your Apology.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

You said, “I’m sorry,” but somehow you haven’t been forgiven. Why? Because you’re doing it wrong! A report from the front lines of apology science.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

* * *

John List is an economist at the University of Chicago.

John LIST: And I go out and run field experiments in the real world.

You’ve probably heard List on our show before. Here are some of the questions he’s tried to answer using field experiments:

LIST: Why do people discriminate against one another? Why do women earn less pay than men in labor markets? How do we convince people to work harder on the job? How do we convince people to pay their taxes on time?

Okay, so the following story took place in early 2017.

LIST: So picture this: I get in an Uber car to go give a keynote panel address at the American Economic Association meetings.

The A.E.A. meetings were in Chicago that year. Very convenient for John List. All he’s got to do is get from his house to the hotel where he’s giving his keynote.

LIST: So I get in the back of the car and it says I’m going to be there in 27 minutes. So I go into my own land of working on my slides, because of course I’m doing things at the last minute. I lose track of time. I look back up about 25 minutes later, and I’m back in front of my house.

DUBNER: Ohhh.

LIST: And I said, “Oh my god, what happened?” The driver said,“I got really confused, and the GPS switched, and we turned around and I thought that you changed the destination, so I went back.” So I told her immediately, “Turn around, go back.” I missed part of my panel.

If John List was just your average, run-of-the-mill Uber rider, the story might have ended there. But he wasn’t. Like a lot of academic economists, John List does some moonlighting. At the time, he held a rather interesting position:

LIST: I’m the chief economist at Uber.

And that night …

LIST: And that night I gave Travis Kalanick, who was the CEO of Uber and co-founder of Uber, a phone call.

And what did List say?

LIST: So what I told Travis was: “You know what is the worst part about getting a bad trip is: I never received an apology.”

For those of you who think that economists are immune to human emotion, that they don’t have feelings that can be hurt …

LIST: And I said to Travis, “That’s a real problem.”

… Well, you’re not necessarily wrong.

LIST: And he said, “Look, if you think it’s a problem, go ahead and solve it.”

It wasn’t that John List’s feelings were hurt by Uber’s non-apology. He actually saw it as a research opportunity.

LIST: I went back to my team at Uber and I said, “let’s calculate what an experience like mine actually does to future ridership.”

In other words, what are the economics of an apology, or a non-apology?

* * *

Considering that Uber facilitates roughly 15 million rides a day, it shouldn’t be surprising that some of them will be bad, like John List’s ride was bad. So List and his economics team at Uber began to think: what would happen if Uber apologized in these cases? And what if these apologies could be wrapped in an experiment that would test the efficacy of apologies generally?

LIST: And where we started was, we have a chance here to give the scientific community the first large-scale field experiment that goes after deepening our understanding of the economics of apologies.

List is perhaps the most prominent economist in the realm of field experiments. He argues they’re much better than lab experiments in answering economic questions.

LIST: I think field experiments are alongside the most important approaches methodologically that we have to examine data.

So that he knew how to do. But concerning apologies per se …

LIST: So I said, “Well, I know nothing about the economics of apologies or how we should be doing things.” So what I did is I reached out to an academic expert named Ben Ho.

Ben HO: My name is Ben Ho. I’m an associate professor of economics at Vassar College.

Ho got interested in apologies during grad school.

HO: I was sort of fumbling around for a new idea, a question no one’s really asked before. And my roommate had a friend that kept on showing up late for their tennis dates. She’d apologize profusely, he would forgive her. And at some point, he got fed up. Right? And he basically said, “Ben, apologies are just empty words. Why do we even bother with them?” And I was inspired because at the time, one of the big debates in game theory is the relationship between sort of empty words — the formal term for this in economics is “cheap talk” — and sort of more costly ways to signal something.

Why is this idea interesting to an economist?

HO: I think the economy is really based on relationships, and relationships are based on trust, and trust depends on knowing who is trustworthy, that you want to interact with over and over again. Who is the most trustworthy person that I should be meeting for tennis dates? Or that I should have as an employee? Or whose restaurant I should go to. And so, when I’m trying to assess somebody’s trustworthiness, you know, different information signals come in that get me to re-evaluate how trustworthy they are. If they do a good job at showing up on time, then they’re more trustworthy. If they show up late, they’re less trustworthy. And an apology is something that sort of helps restore my trust in them by sort of signaling their trustworthiness to me.

In other words, an apology may represent something more concrete than mere guilt or embarrassment.

HO: And that’s how I started formulating the model of apologies.

Ho’s apology model makes a variety of predictions. For instance: apologies are more likely in longer relationships.

HO: The idea is that you could think of an apology as an investment. That basically if I’m never going to see this person again, then why should I go out of the way to restore this relationship? But if this is the beginning of a long relationship, then it does make sense for me to bring the relationship back into line.

The most important prediction of Ho’s model has to do with efficacy.

HO: The model argues that for an apology to be effective it has to be costly.

When economists like Ho talk about “cost,” they don’t mean it strictly in the financial sense. Although that is important.

HO: People like money.

But there are other types of cost you can incur. Consider what happens when you make what Ho calls a “status apology.”

HO: These are the ones where you basically admit your own incompetence and you beg for forgiveness by sort of making yourself look dumb.

For instance: “I’m sorry. What I did was completely idiotic.” If done sincerely, Ho says, this kind of apology can carry a real cost to your reputation. Another form of apology — a “commitment apology” — can be even more powerful.

HO: They’re a commitment to do better in the future. And so it’s basically saying, “Yes, I screwed up. But I recognize what I did was wrong. And in the future, you can hold me to a higher standard.”

But: Ho’s model shows that a commitment apology can also backfire. The logic is pretty simple: if you promise to improve, and then don’t, the apology is worth less than zero. You can see why Ben Ho was the person John List thought of as an apology expert.

LIST: So what Ben did is he formalized in a very natural way and a very common-sense way how we should think about apologies.

But Ho’s apology model was only a model. How would it stand up to empirical scrutiny? He did some lab experiments with undergraduates, and they produced some evidence backing the model. But he, like List, had come to be skeptical of many lab experiments.

HO: I think they are a good start for helping us identify a phenomenon. But what we really care about is what happens in the real world.

So he went looking for some real-world evidence about apologies. One idea came from his wife — who was then his girlfriend, and studying to be a doctor.

HO: And something that doctors worry about a lot is whether they should apologize after a mistake was made. And the reason they worry is that they’re scared of lawsuits.

So a doctor’s apology might be used against them in a malpractice suit. At the same time, there was evidence showing that a doctor was less likely to get sued if they did apologize.

HO: So people have identified what they call a vicious cycle, where doctors are afraid to apologize because they’re scared of getting sued. But the patients, the only reason they sue is perhaps because they never got an apology. To combat this, a lot of states started passing what are called “I’m sorry” laws. These are laws that basically say that if a doctor apologizes to a patient, that apology can’t be used in court against them.

Ho was curious to find out what happened to malpractice claims once doctors could apologize without fear of reprisal. He and the economist Elaine Liu tried to measure just how much an apology was worth.

HO: We found shockingly really big effects. We found that states that passed this law saw the speed of settlements increase by around 20 percent. We saw that for sort of moderate injuries, the final size of the settlements decreased by around $20,000. For sort of major injuries, which included quadriplegia and death, the size of the final settlements decreased by around $50,000 or $60,000.

This was compelling, but Ho had to admit the limits of the malpractice data.

HO: That’s not ideal, right? Because that wasn’t an experiment, these were very large-scale correlations at the state level. There could be a lot of confounding factors that we tried to control for, but maybe we didn’t do a good job.

For instance, maybe the “I’m sorry” laws influenced how doctors or patients behaved for different reasons; maybe they led to other hospital reforms, or changed the way malpractice lawyers advised their clients.

HO: You want a place with fine-grain data, and ideally experimental data. And I’ve been looking for that for years. So I started all of these plans to run experiments on Facebook or Twitter, where we could just sort of do apologies at scale, and I just never had the resources to do that. And so just out of the blue like last year, I got this phone call from John List.

LIST: “How are you doing, my friend?”

HO: And you see his name show up on your phone, and you’re just … Because John List is one of the founders of modern experimental economics. To get a call out of the blue was sort of an amazing experience. And he basically just said …

LIST: “Ben, here’s the problem that we have. What do we know scientifically, and what types of solutions can we propose and test using in a field experiment using Uber’s app?”

HO: They started conceiving of this project for apologies, and Ben Ho was the apology guy, that’s how I got involved.

Ho and List, along with two more economists — Basil Halperin and Ian Muir — began to devise an experiment that would a) test the theoretical predictions of Ho’s model; and b) figure out, more generally, whether and how a company should apologize to its customers.

HO: Yeah, the main goal for the experiment was to understand how best to repair relationships with customers.

John List had already looked at how costly a bad trip was for Uber.

LIST: We did a huge analysis of all all of those trips in the 5 percent worst kind of trips, and these tend to be trips where you’re delivered between 10 and 15 minutes late. And those types of trips end up costing us 5 to 10 percent in terms of revenues lost.

Meaning a customer who got a really bad trip would spend 5 to 10 percent less on future Uber trips.

LIST: That’s exactly right.

Now, in this new study, List and Ho wanted to see if perhaps an apology could lower that.

LIST: Sure. What we did, is we looked across all of the major markets in the U.S., across several cities.

HO: Over the months of the study, we basically accumulated 1.6 million riders. Like, to be able to do an experiment that involved 1.6 million people was sort of mind- blowing.

LIST: And when a person had a bad trip, what we did is within an hour after their bad trip we sent them an email, which included an apology and in some cases a promotion.

DUBNER: Promotion meaning a coupon?

LIST: Exactly. So we give people a $5 coupon, which is good for a future trip.

DUBNER: So one-and-a-half million riders, and you identify the really bad trips and then you send apologies. But I’m guessing there’s a variety of different treatment groups, treatment and control groups in here, yes? Can you break that down for us?

LIST: Exactly. So it sort of works as follows. You get a bad trip, and after you received that bad trip, we randomly put you in one of eight different groups. So given that we have one-and-a-half million people, we’re placing about 200,000 people in each of these eight different groups. And the eight different groups could be thought about as follows: You have a control group, which has a bad trip, and they never receive any word from Uber. That’s sort of my experience — when I got a bad trip, Uber never contacted me. That that’s sort of the status quo.

HO: And for the other groups, we just tested different kinds of apologies.

LIST: Something we call the basic apology was an email that said,“Oh no, your trip took longer than we estimated.” We juxtapose that against what we call a status apology, which goes as follows:“We know our estimate was off.” The third kind of apology is what we call a commitment apology, and that goes along the lines of: “We’re working hard to give you arrival times that you can count on.”

LIST: We cross all of those four groups — the no-apology group, and the three basic apology groups — with a customer promotion that says, “We’re giving you a $5 coupon for a future trip.”

DUBNER: So how does it work though — this is just a small detail, but I’m curious, how does it work for the control group that in the first of the four treatments, they’re not hearing from Uber at all. But then in the control group, of the ones who are getting the $5 coupon, they must be getting some kind of message there. Or is it just $5 credit shows up in their account, they barely even know it?

LIST: No, you’re exactly right, that’s a good point. So there’s just a statement that you are receiving a $5 promotional coupon. Now this is not unusual, because that is what we do all the time, we send passengers coupons. Now what’s important though is the timing of that. So these particular $5 coupons were coming in within an hour of the bad trip. So now we can explore how a $5 coupon right after a bad trip compares to a generic $5 coupon.

DUBNER: And then how far out from the bad ride do you measure each customer to see what their behavior looked like? In other words, whether they stopped using Uber or started using it less after a bad trip.

LIST: So after we send them the email, what we do is we track their consumption purchases and number of trips and how much they spend, for 84 days on the Uber platform.

DUBNER: Okay, so we understand the eight different groups. We understand how the communication would work. And then you’re going to measure the behavior of the people and you can identify which treatment group they were in. Is there anything else we need to know about the experiment before you tell us the findings?

LIST: Yeah, I think there’s one more twist of the experiment. Beyond the eight treatment cells that we had, that I would call the primary experiment, we also have — in the real world what happens is after you get a bad trip, it’s possible that you get another bad trip a week or two later. So what we did is we complemented the primary treatments with a set of secondary treatments, where, if you received two bad trips or three bad trips, we send an additional apology or an additional two apologies in the case of the third bad trip, because what we’re interested in is, if you have repeat apologies, can that actually backfire? Or perhaps it’s actually better for the firm to have multiple apologies.

DUBNER: Okay, so give me then a quick summary of the findings.

LIST: So the first data pattern that jumps out of our experiment is that you really have to squint hard to make the case that apologies by themselves work. It’s very difficult to find consistent and significant impacts of the apology alone on future spending or the number of trips that consumers take.

DUBNER: Does that suggest then that anyone who apologizes — individual or corporation or government or whatever — that just an apology alone in a modal setting is not worth the time? Or do you think there’s still value to it?

LIST: I still think there’s going to be value to it, but I think that what’s important here is that the firm needs to make sure that when they apologize, they take proper discretion in that the consumer understands that there was a true cost to that apology. I think the standard apology treatments that we had did not have a good element of, “You know what? That was costly for Uber to do it.”

DUBNER: What’s an example of a cost other than a cost paid back to the customer? In other words, yes, you can give $5 credit to that customer but is there a kind of cost, would it be a charitable donation? What can you show in an email that is a cost to you?

LIST: I think it could take many forms. As you mentioned, it could be a real dollar outlay to the person. It could be a real dollar outlay to a charitable organization. It could be that you signal to others an embarrassing moment. Now in many cases if it’s just an email, that’s a very private thing. But when we talk about apologies more generally, if you show some empathy and some embarrassment to a broad reach of people, it might not be a true dollar cost, but it’s a true reputational cost.

DUBNER: Okay, so the first big finding is that apologies in and of themselves are not a panacea. What’s the second big finding?

LIST: I think the second big finding is that if you use a $5 coupon or cold hard cash for a future trip, that actually can work to reverse some of the bad effects of a bad trip. Now to put it in perspective, a bad trip, the person spends 5 to 10 percent less on future trips over, say, an 84-day period. If you give them a $5 coupon, I can get an increase of 2 percent in net spending.

DUBNER: And how diminishing are those returns? In other words, what if you gave $20 and $100?

LIST: Great question. The only thing that we experimented on was a $5 coupon.

DUBNER: But I’m just curious, I’ll ask you to speculate now a little bit on a couple of fronts. Does your research have anything useful to teach if I’m not a multi-billion-dollar rideshare company? I mean, can this sort of finding translate into the personal sphere? I guess what I’m really asking is, John, since you guys write that money speaks louder than words, right? An apology with a $5 coupon does better than an apology without. Does this mean basically that if I’ve angered someone in my family, I should just slip a C-note under the pillow? Is that the way to do it.

LIST: And I could see you doing that, Stephen. That’s wonderful. No, I think the four broader lessons that I would take is first of all, apologies are not a panacea. Secondly, there will be most likely to have an impact when they are costly to the apologizer, and the apologizee understands that there’s a cost. That’s the second big lesson. The third lesson is that you should use them with proper discretion. And what I mean by that is don’t overuse them because of the next major result that we find in our data is that if you overuse apologies, they can actually backfire, and they can be worse for the firm rather than better.

HO: So the idea here is that an apology is basically like signing a contract. When I apologize I’m basically accepting being held to a higher standard relative to somebody that did not apologize. And we saw that by looking at what happened to people that received multiple apologies. Right, so for some subset of these people if their ride was late two times or three times, they received apologies over and over again. And what we found is that they actually punished the company more than customers that never got an apology at all.

There’s an interesting wrinkle to the Uber apology study. As it was underway, the company’s controversial founder and C.E.O., Travis Kalanick, was ousted by the board.

UBER AD: I’m Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s new CEO. It’s time to move in a new direction.

DUBNER: Uber the company quite famously has found itself apologizing for a lot of stuff over the past few years — mostly male executives behaving badly, but also what’s sometimes characterized as sort of thuggish corporate behavior, strong- arming. And they’ve issued a variety of corporate apologies. Have you examined their efficacy? And I’m curious whether this kind of micro-apology research has trickled up the corporate ladder into the macro apologies that the firm has done.

LIST: Yeah, I think it’s a great question. When you look at results like what we have, perhaps what we were finding is a general feature of the way people think about apologies. And those same sorts of insights then can make their way up. Because right now Uber is undergoing a reputational campaign. The new CEO, Dara, is out saying,“Uber has changed,” and,“We’re a new company,” and “We apologize for all of our misbehaviors in the past.” I think what we learned —

DUBNER: Is it working?

LIST: Well, the thing is we don’t have the counterfactual. So we don’t know what the world would have looked like absent Dara going out and apologizing. We didn’t do that as a way to test this macro type of approach. You could have though. You could have had Dara randomly doing radio spots and television spots, in different cities.

UBER AD: And you’ve got my word that we’re charting an even better road for Uber and for those that rely on us every day.

LIST: Unfortunately, Uber didn’t do that, so it’s impossible for anyone to unequivocally say,“This type of apology works, and this type doesn’t at that macro level.”

* * *

The economist John List, by running a huge field experiment with Uber riders, learned a few things about apologies:

LIST: So I would say an apology to have impact needs to be costly and understood by the person who receives the apology that it’s costly. I think it needs to occur directly after the event happened. You cannot overuse them because then it is harder to entertain or show that the apology was costly.

So that’s interesting, and maybe useful. But it also represents a particular situation: when a company has disappointed its customer and makes what is essentially a private apology by e-mail or text. What’s known about public apologies, and their efficacy? It’d be nice to find someone who’s studied that too, don’t you think?

Karen CERULO: My name is Karen Cerulo.

Cerulo is on the faculty of Rutgers University.

CERULO: Yeah, I’m a cultural sociologist and one of my interests involves studying media messages: how does the content and the formatting of these messages influence their effectiveness?

Cerulo’s interest in apologies grew out of her research on how the media reports acts of violence.

CERULO: I was exploring how the crafting of a message can make audiences view violence as either heinous or justified. Public apologies presented a natural outgrowth of that work. After all, apologies are meant to persuade people in making judgments about what the offender did.

She partnered with another sociologist, Janet Ruane.

CERULO: We wanted to get a broad swath of apologies, so we analyzed apologies that occurred between October of 2000 and October of 2012.

They included only apologies where the full text was available, so they could be analyzed. And, furthermore …

CERULO: We wanted apologies that were highly visible, things that were covered by five or more distinct media outlets, so that we could look at people’s reactions to them and see whether the apologies were effective or not. So following those rules we gathered a sample of 183 apologies.

So these were apologies, by definition, made by prominent people or organizations. For instance:

CERULO: Chris Brown.

Chris BROWN: I felt it was time that you hear directly from me that I am sorry.

CERULO: The GOP official Marilyn Davenport

Marilyn DAVENPORT: I humbly apologize.

CERULO: Marion Jones, the Olympic athlete.

Marion JONES: I want to ask for your forgiveness for my actions.

CERULO: Kevin Rudd, the prime minister of Australia.

Kevin RUDD: We say sorry.

CERULO: We looked at some from companies too: CBS, Apple.

Cerulo and Ruane then analyzed the format and content of these apologies.

CERULO: Now by content, I mean what was mentioned. The victim, the offender, the act, what motivated the act, the context, the presence of remorse or some sort of offer for restitution. And by formatting, I mean how do people order do those things in their apology? What did they cover first, second, etc.? Because we believe those elements would make a real difference in the apology’s reception.

They categorized each apology using a standard typology tool that covers five strategies: denial, evasion, reduction, corrective action, and mortification. They also identified seven sequencing formats. Some apologies, for instance, start out by focusing on the offender; some on the victim; others on the context. Once they’d categorized each apology, the researchers then measured their seeming effectiveness:

CERULO: Every apology that we analyzed actually had poll data attached to it because the events were significant and visible enough that polls were done gauging people’s reactions.

Then they analyzed the data, controlling as best as they could for factors like age, gender, race, and so on.

CERULO: We wanted to make sure that it just wasn’t about who you were or who your victims were, but that there was something about the message you delivered, the apology itself, that was at work here.

Okay, so what’d they learn?

CERULO: It turned out that what you say first, and what you say last, goes a long way in whether or not people forgive you.

The beginning of an apology, Cerulo believes, is extra-important because …

CERULO: Well, the first thing you say is priming the audience. That is it’s pointing them, cognitively speaking, in a certain direction and it’s framing the action in a certain way.

And that’s why the most successful apologies in her research begin by focusing on the victim, or apologizee; not the apologizer.

CERULO: Where you would start out by talking about your victim, and talk very little about yourself or your own justifications, and end your apology by talking about how sorry you were. And if possible, stating that you’d make some restitution. Those types of apologies were the most effective.

Cerulo wasn’t surprised that successful apologies start with the victim and end with a sense of remorse.

CERULO: Because in some ways, those findings mirrored research I had done on violent messages. That if you want someone to feel that an act of violence is heinous rather than justifiable, you’ve got to bring them into the story via the victim.

But what did surprise her …

CERULO: Overall, we were surprised at how few people could make an effective apology. We really thought, given the kinds of people we were dealing with, that there would be agents and handlers and staff that would help in this regard. But really less than a third of the apologies that we looked at were effective with the public. One of the least effective types of apologies are what we call offender-driven. And these start out by the person talking about themselves and then giving all sorts of information about the context and the motivation of their apologies. That was one of the most common types of apologies. It was almost always ineffective.

In other words, the kind of apology where you say, “I’m sorry” but what you mean is: “I’m sorry I got caught doing the thing I did, and now I’m really sorry I have to embarrass myself by issuing this apology.”

Justin TIMBERLAKE: What occurred was unintentional, completely regrettable, and I apologize if you guys were offended.

So what is Cerulo’s general advice on how to give a successful apology?

CERULO: Number one: don’t wait. Forget your ego, forget the advice of your handlers. Unless you’re involved in a legal situation, where you’re advised not to speak, you should make an apology right away. Second, don’t apologize for what people thought. In other words, we’ve often heard people say, “I’m sorry that people misunderstood me; I’m sorry that people misinterpreted or misread my actions.” Apologize for what you did — not for what other people might have thought about it.

Third, don’t give context. We don’t care, Roseanne Barr, if you were on Ambien. We don’t care as in the case of Samantha Bee if you wanted to reclaim the “c word.” We don’t care, as in the case of Elon Musk, if you were mad at someone when you made an unfortunate comment. The why of what you did is less important to people than your regret and your remorse. And finally there’s really a successful formula that you need to use: identify your victim right up front, then express remorse, and, if it’s possible, make restitution. That’s it. That’s really what people want to hear in an apology.

Cerulo notes that one of the most famous apologies in recent memory — Bill Clinton’s apology for his White House sexcapades with Monica Lewinsky — started out as ineffective.

CERULO: The issue with the Bill Clinton apology is that, number one, it took so long for it to be made. It was made multiple times. What we notice when we look at Bill Clinton’s apologies is that they got better as he continued doing it. So, for example, the televised apology spent a little bit too much time talking about how people were victimizing him, and how a lot of the accusations made against him were political in nature.

Bill CLINTON: It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives and get on with our national life.

CERULO: By the time we got to the apologies that he was making at the National Prayer Service, for example, a lot of that material dropped out, and he began conforming more strictly to what we suggest is the most effective formula. Talking about his victims and talking about true remorse and wanting to change his behavior.

CLINTON: It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine.

HO: One of my favorite psychological experiments made these two videos of Bill Clinton.

That again is the apology economist Ben Ho.

HO: And in one video he looks really angry about the Monica Lewinsky thing. And, in another case, Bill Clinton looks apologetic for Monica Lewinsky. The people that saw apologetic Clinton, the apology worked. They liked him more. But the thing is that people that saw angry Clinton respected him more, right? There’s this tradeoff between being liked and being respected. So the other sort of major cost of an apology is it can make you look incompetent.

Now that’s an interesting wrinkle. Since prominent people are inherently quite competent — or at least considered to be — there may be a built-in disincentive to apologize. I asked John List if that’s why a certain uber-prominent person of the moment often doesn’t apologize.

DUBNER: The current president of United States, President Trump, has quite famously made a policy of not apologizing even when he’s made a simple, verifiable mistake or misstatement. And I would argue he’s hardly the only person in the world who takes this kind of zero tolerance for apology strategy. I’m curious what you think of that as a general strategy because of what you’ve been telling us is that apologies done poorly can backfire. And I’m guessing they can signal weakness and so on. So what do you think from a game-theoretical perspective, should more of us think about just never apologizing for anything?

LIST: Well first of all, some of us, it gives us satisfaction to show remorse and show that we care about the other person, so a lot of times when you apologize that it might be in part for selfish reasons. You just want to get it off your chest and do the right thing. Now you bring up something interesting with politicians. When I worked in the White House in the Bush-two administration, we did some things back then that I thought the White House would apologize for. And I worked at that time with a number of senators, when we talked about new environmental legislation. And when things leaked, I thought that there would be an apology. And what puzzled me was — an apology never actually came. And you’re exactly right. Trump is doing the exact same thing. Trump apologizes for nothing —even though it’s clear that in some cases he’s wrong. Now what I chalk that up to back then is: if you show weakness as a politician and you go on record making a mistake, guess what? Next November comes very soon. And that’s on every billboard that you made this dumb mistake. You’re an idiot. You’re a bad person. So I think in the political world, there’s actually a really good game-theoretic reason why we have really a very scant number of apologies. But I think it’s actually for a very rational purpose.

STEWART: If you’re going to apologize, go with the heart. Really mean it. People can tell when you’re faking it and when you’re not. So clearly at the end of the day, just be real.

That’s Quaishawn Stewart.

STEWART: I’m from Westchester — Yonkers, New York.

Stewart is 25. He’s an aspiring comedian who, earlier this year, was working for a delivery company in Brooklyn. On the street, he saw a young Orthodox Jewish boy — a Hasidic kid, with his hair cut with the long side curls known as peyes. And the kid was crying. Stewart pulled out his phone and started recording.

STEWART: I’d be crying if I looked like that too, bro. That’s up what they be doing to y’all.

STEWART: Well, basically, it was just a video of me joking on a Hasidic Jew’s kid. His haircut. Because you know how their haircut is different from most people’s.

Stewart uploaded his video to Facebook with a post that said: “Had to really let my son know how I felt about the whole Jewish haircut … pray for the lil’ homie.” He didn’t think too much about it, and he went back to his delivery work.

STEWART: I was doing two shifts at that job, so I would work all day. I had finished my first shift extremely early and I had enough time to watch Netflix and eat. As soon as I sat down to get comfortable and do all that, one of my friends wrote me, asked me if I was alright. And I’m like, “What do you mean, am I alright?” He was like, “Bro, your face is in the news.” I’m like, “What are you talking about?”

Someone had reposted Stewart’s video on Twitter.

STEWART: So I get on Twitter and I start seeing my video trending, and it’s not my page though. Some girl on Twitter, I don’t know who she is, she already got a million views. “I’m like, nah, this crazy.”

Once the video went viral on Twitter, it was picked up by media outlets.

STEWART: I thought it was funny at first and then I was like, “nah.”

PIX 11 MEDIA: It’s disturbing to watch.

NEWS 12 MEDIA: It all started with this video.

PIX 11 MEDIA: A young Hasidic Jewish boy is mocked and berated

NEWS 12 MEDIA: … for his haircut in a video that went viral.

PIX 11 MEDIA: The man who posted that video identified as Quaishawn James.

STEWART: I know at the end of the day my grandmother watches this. And then probably about 10 minutes later she was sending me a link of me in the news and I was like, “Yeah, this is getting out of hand.”

The video was widely condemned as anti-Semitic, “sickening,” and “dehumanizing.” Facebook took down the video on the grounds that it violated their policy against bullying. Twitter soon followed. As for Quaishawn Stewart: he says he intended the post to be a light-hearted joke, and that he’s not hateful or racist.

STEWART: I’m black, so then there’s a lot of people that tried to make it a race thing. That made it go even more viral.

He didn’t know what to do.

STEWART: I felt like I was taking too long to actually address the situation.

By this time, he wasn’t sure an apology would even accomplish anything.

STEWART: The day that they actually put me in the news is when I knew I was — it was already too late. I felt like I was already too late to apologize. So a day go by, probably two days go by and then it’s just constant DMs. Constant tweets. My phone keeps messing up. I keep seeing new articles of me with my picture in it, and I’m like “Nah, I got to do something.”

He decided to record his apology live, on Twitter. He did it in his car, as he was about to head into work.

STEWART: Good morning to those that’s watching this video right now.

STEWART: My heart just jumped. I didn’t know what to say really, like I was just so nervous.

STEWART: Alright, I just want to sincerely apologize to that young boy and his family. I never meant for anybody to get hurt or for this to be taken the wrong way. It was just a joke and I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.

STEWART: I was just really trying to get people to understand where I was coming from.

STEWART: I don’t want this to be a race thing. I have nothing against Jewish people. I have friends that are Jewish. My babysitter growing up was Jewish. It’s nothing — I have nothing against Jewish people. Trust me, they done been through too much, too much. We’ve been through as much as they’ve been through. They’ve been through worse. I should have been more considerate and more open to other people’s feelings.

STEWART: That came from the heart. Everything I said I really meant that.

STEWART: That was just me being real immature. That right there is a form of bullying, and I’m truly sorry for that. That right there. I cannot take that back. I can’t. I can’t take it back. I’m truly sorry for what I have done. My actions are — oh my. I can’t even speak right now that’s how upset I am.

STEWART: I didn’t expect anybody to gravitate to my apology. I’m just apologizing for something that I did wrong.

But people did gravitate to Stewart’s apology.

STEWART: I look back, it was like 500,000 views — and I’m just like, “Whoa!” So I start reading the comments and I was just like “This is a lot.”

His apology was praised by leaders in the Hasidic community and well beyond.

Rabbi Alexander RAPAPORT: I’m humbled. I mean, I wish I could be so — if I could take back things that I did in such a humble way.

STEWART: And I didn’t expect none of that. So it was just shocking to me completely.

Stewart had a history of helping feed homeless people — buying the food himself, making sandwiches to give out. Just a few months before the offending video, he’d been featured in a local news story for his work. He said he’d grown up in a shelter and now wanted to give back. He brought this up now while he was tweeting back and forth with Jewish leaders.

STEWART: The Jewish community has a lot of soup kitchens in Brooklyn, and I’ve been aware of that when I was working out there. And I told them I feed the homeless; I have no problem coming out there to help y’all. I realize you have a lot of kitchens. So somebody seen that tweet, organizations started reaching out to me, So I went out there and I did the soup kitchen with them.

NEWS 12 MEDIA: Quaishawn Stewart of Westchester volunteering at Masbia, a kosher soup kitchen. A mission he says to show that he’s sorry for offending the Jewish community.

Historically, there’d been serious friction between the black and Hasidic communities in some New York neighborhoods. Stewart’s original video had threatened to ramp up that friction; in the end, it seems he helped deflate it.

STEWART: I definitely was enlightened of the whole Jewish situation, the Holocaust and everything. I’ve gained a whole bunch of knowledge since then in reference to that.

It’s hard to not be inspired, on some level, by the Quaishawn Stewart story. You could easily imagine how it might have gone the other way. But that, says Karen Cerulo of Rutgers, is the power of a legitimate apology. She gives Stewart’s apology much higher marks than most celebrity apologies.

CERULO: He starts out by centering our focus on the victim. He’s talking about the little boy. He’s talking about the family. And he is highlighting that he did something to offend these people. It’s a great start. The end of his apology is really a true expression of remorse. So good starting place, good ending place. That’s big.

If you want to hear a couple earlier episodes that are related to this one, check them out, in our archive — one’s called “That’s a Great Question,” the other is “What Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson Have in Common?”

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Karen Cerulo, sociologist at Rutgers University.

Ben Ho, economist at Vassar College.

John List, economist at the University of Chicago.

Quaishawn Stewart, Yonkers resident.

RESOURCES

“Apologies of the Rich and Famous,” Karen Cerulo, Janet Ruane (2014).

“Toward an understanding of the economics of apologies: evidence from a large-scale natural field experiment,” Basil Halperin, Benjamin Ho, John List, Ian Muir (2018).

EXTRA

“That’s a Great Question” Freakonomics Radio (2015).

“What Do Medieval Nuns and Bo Jackson Have in Common?” Freakonomics Radio (2013).

The post How to Optimize Your Apology (Ep. 353) appeared first on Freakonomics.

Source: https://bloghyped.com/how-to-optimize-your-apology-ep-353/

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jeroldlockettus · 6 years